JOHNSON, Samuel.

£1,800 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Works. A beautifully bound set of an attractive edition, printed in a large legible type. Arthur Murphy's "Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson" was first published in 1792.The set has an appealing Scottish provenance, with the ownership inscription at the head of the title pages of "Mrs Forbes, Echt House", Aberdeenshire. This was the home of James Forbes (1775-1850), who married in 1801 Jane Niven (1795-1842); thence by descent to Anthony Keith-Falconer, 7th earl of Kintore (1794-1844), with his small embossed stamp on blanks before each title, a fox head over a scroll bearing the motto "Floreat Scientia" (let knowledge flourish). Kintore was a keen and notoriously reckless huntsman. "At his hunting box in Scotland, which he called "The Peat Stack,"on all the china, glass, and plate, was a fox's head engraved, with the motto 'Floreat Scientia,' and he had the same device on his travelling carriage" (Loder-Symonds). That doyen of 19th-century sporting writers, Charles James Apperley ("Nimrod"), described him memorably: "He is as hard as flint. A muddy ditch is a bed of roses to Lord Kintore" (Hunting Reminiscences, 1843, p. 214).

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